“I feel like dancing in a new way,” I told Ming.
He was driving us home. He’d just grocery shopped, while I walked in parking lots, looking at trash and dumpsters, as I am wont to do.
“Dancing in a new way, like how?” he asked.
“With my ass,” I said. I imagined dancing and waving my ass around a lot in healing movement.
“Ok,” Ming said, turning left at a green light.
“I already have an ass,” I said. “It’s copious. It will be effective.” True, Laura-Marie. I felt like one of those alien comics.
hips
When I used to dance with my mom, she would advise me, “Move your hips!” I think she meant my ass. A lot that she told me to do when she was alive is much easier to do, now that she’s on the other side.
There’s more spaciousness. Death creates too much spaciousness. She doesn’t tell me many new things, so I can think a lot about what I remember and take it inside of me differently.
nap
The other day, I napped. That’s unusual for me. It was cold, and I just wanted to be warm and safe in bed. I got sleepy–it was a cloudy day, so the bedroom was kind of dark, in the afternoon. It got to a point where I could get up and be a person, or put on my cpap mask and sleep. So I tried sleep, and woke up two and a half hours later.
Crap–I needed to eat dinner and take two pills. I got up, disoriented. Ming was busy cleaning out some clutter. He was working on organizing my zines also, with a lot of energy. A box was flimsy and buckling, so he was transferring stuff and organizing it.
He asked me questions about my preferences, and I was like–what? He didn’t understand I was not really a person yet. I hurt my toe on my computer chair. Then I was crying. It was an overwhelming feeling of grief–I woke up in the universe where my mom’s dead, again. Oops. Wrong universe.
Ming hugged me, as I sat there, and I cried on his tummy, since he was standing up. “Why are you sad?” he asked.
“My mom’s dead,” I said. That’s reason enough. All purpose sadness reason.
conclusion
If you see me dancing in a new way, now you know why. The desire dawned on me: why not. Have an ass–might as well shake it.
